Inevitable results of Schumann, Chopin and Liszt--Heller, Raff, Jensen, Scharwenka, Moszkowski, and other German composers--The influence of national characteristics: Grieg, his style and his compositions; Christian Sinding--The Russians: Balakireff, Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky, Arensky, Glazounoff, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and others--Spanish traits; I. Albéniz; pianoforte composers in England and the United States. It is scarcely to be wondered at that the work of Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt has eclipsed that of most of their contemporaries, nor that three such remarkable composers should have left a standard for pianoforte music by which little else for the piano since that day can afford to be measured. One feels that the German Romantic spirit could find no expression more complete than that which Schumann gave it; that the beauties of sound in the pianoforte could not be again put into such emotional form as Chopin put them; that the instrument itself could not be made to do more than Liszt had made it do. These things are nearly true. One cannot therefore expect to find in the music of their obscure contemporaries such superlative greatness as has made theirs known to the whole world. One expects to find, and does find, in the music of their successors imitations of their method, style, or technique. The literature for the piano has been stuffed to overflowing with music of this kind. Only now and then may a little of it be distinguished by a touch of originality, either of personal, or, more frequently, of national or local idiom. STEPHEN HELLER AND JOACHIM RAFF I In Germany the romanticism of Schumann, combined with the technique of Liszt, has about run its course. With the exception of Brahms, no composer of high order has there given his attention to the pianoforte. Starting with Stephen Heller (1814-88), the most lovable contemporary and friend of Chopin, the list of composers for the pianoforte touches upon Joachim Raff (1822-82), Adolf Jensen (1837-79), Philipp and Xaver Scharwenka, Maurice Moszkowski, Friedrich Gernsheim, for an instant on Richard Strauss and longer upon Max Reger.